It shouldn't be a surprise that we believe newspapers are vital to a community.

When we are at our best, we are looking out for your interests, whether you are a resident, a commuting worker or a visitor who loves this special place.

Every newspaper, no matter the size, has a charge to act as a watch dog of local institutions to keep them accountable to the community as a whole. That means if a local public board is acting in a way that is inappropriate, it is up to the local newspaper to say something. That is one reason we write editorials every week.

Unfortunately an editorial we wrote on Jan. 12 titled "Visit Estes Park needs to work on transparency" seems to have had the opposite effect than we were hoping for.

Recently we noticed a string of emails between two members of the Visit Estes Park Board of Directors in the publicly available email records of Mayor Todd Jirsa, which we reported on with a story in the Wednesday, May 17 edition. The back and forth was between Board President Steve Kruger and Treasurer Charley Dickey.

Dickey shared the emails with the mayor, making them easy to find by a member of the public. In this string of emails Kruger objected to this action by Dickey and even marked his emails with the subject line: Private and Confidential.

What were these private emails about? Re-scheduling a meeting of the Visit Estes Park Board.

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To be clear, emails between members of a public board are public information, except for a few specific exceptions usually pertaining to personnel issues. These emails did not come close to meeting that threshold.

Most distressingly, at its Tuesday meeting, the board not only endorsed Kruger's actions to mark his emails confidential, they set board policy to require emails remain confidential within the board. This is a ridiculous action intended to purposefully make accessing public information more difficult.

The board cannot make their emails confidential to the public. It is public information and any member of the public can request them through the Colorado Open Records Act. This action would simply make it policy to not freely share emails with members of the public, like Mayor Jirsa.

The fact that the board took the time to officially make it harder for the public to see this information makes us, again, question their commitment to transparency.

Were this the only action taken at the meeting to limit transparency within this organization it would have been troubling enough; however, at the same meeting, the board voted 4-1 to set a policy requiring board members to go through Visit Estes Park CEO Elizabeth Fogarty to make a public comment to a member of the media.

If a reporter wants a comment from the board president or treasurer, s/he would have to ask the CEO first - and hope she returned their call.

This is a clunky system designed to filter any piece of information through one person, and potentially intimidate board members from saying anything publicly at all.

We have to wonder whether this board understands that the CEO works for them, not the other way around.

The bottom line for this newspaper is that the public has a right to know how its tax dollars are being spent and how the board that is directing the organization that is spending that money is operating. If Visit Estes Park isn't willing to be open about its activities, we're committed to doing what is necessary to report the facts to you. We will be reporting on their meetings and submitting CORA requests when necessary to make sure public information remains accessible to you.

Planning commission takes key step

The Estes Valley Planning Commission has been, by anyone's standards, a very conservative board with a "keep things the same" mindset for years.

The board's conservative approach to key issues often has left the heaving lifting up to the Estes Park Town Board when it comes to making decisions that will significantly impact conditions in the town.

That mindset appears to be changing.

The planning commission entertained several key amendments to the Estes Valley Development Code on Tuesday that will definitely impact the town's ability to house its workforce and to provide attainable housing for others who have restrictive income.

The planning commission's voting to recommend approval of these amendments to the Estes Park Town Board and the Larimer County Board of Commissioners must the recognized and roundly applauded.

The most critical amendments the planning commission recommended to the two boards for approval will:

• Increase the maximum height of buildings to 38, which allows developers to build three-story buildings in the RM (multi-family) District

• Create a new formula for calculating building height

• Establish new design standards for multi-family buildings in the RM District

The planning commission also is recommending approval of amendments to revise and simplify the criteria for special reviews, limiting lots in single-family zone districts to one single-family structure, and removing a provision that currently prohibits non-commercial use in parks and recreation facilities.

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